I've always been interested in health. As a teenager, I studied veterinary science in 4-H, vaccinating goats, and docking baby lambs' tails. I found it fascinating, but intense, because I empathized so much with the animals. After awhile, I decided to study computers instead. My first career was helping people work with technology.
I became a health revolutionary without ever thinking about it. All three of my kids were born at home, and I never considered having them anywhere else. I delayed vaccinating my first child while I stayed at home with her, because I didn't see a good reason to overload her precious immune system. I read voraciously about health and birth and babies. I remember that my midwife said that I'd read more books in her collection than any mom she had ever attended in 18 years!
It's a good thing I have a passion for health, because in the 22 years since, I have been through incredible health challenges - the kind that conventional medicine isn't much help with! I got a real-life health education like you wouldn't believe. I learned so much on my own that I finally decided to make it official, and went "back to school" to become a practitioner of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition.
The Autism Years
In 1993, I gave birth to my second child, a son. He seemed fine at first. I have pictures of giving him a bath in the sink, beaming up at me with sparkling eyes. When he was around four months old, I found my dream job, running a small computer department, and went back to work. Just after he turned two, there was a big layoff at my company. My husband and I got a good job offer together, and we moved to Florida. Soon after, my son's new teachers noticed that he did not seem to hear them when they called his name. They suggested we have someone evaluate him.
Six long months, after lots of denial and many evaluations, my son was diagnosed with autism. We were heartbroken.
We felt very alone, with two small children, so far from our family and friends. I remember months of fear and desperation, digging for answers for my son on the internet every night after the kids were asleep. I asked hundreds of questions of the moms I found there... what can I do? what might help? After awhile, I saw that there was a group of moms (and a few enlightened doctors) who believed that autism is a medical disorder, and there are things that can help, such as special vitamins, restrictive diets, fighting yeast (candida), and removing heavy metals.
We started some autism vitamins that Fall, and within THREE DAYS, my son was making a little contact with us again, up off the couch, a little more alert and less spaced out. It was our fist sign of progress, and it gave us hope. More than ever, I was determined to learn and understand the science, and investigate anything that might help him.
After that, we tried everything... I started going to autism conferences, and learned to read medical studies. I flew my guy to leading-edge doctors in three states. We got allergy testing done and implemented mind-bending rotating diets. We spent years removing heavy metals, a painstaking process like emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. We racked up a ton of debt and bought an infrared sauna and a hyperbaric chamber. We got his genetics, and at one point, used a dizzying cocktail of 40 different supplements, just a pinch each, designed to support his genetics.
Did it help? In a word, YES. Not everything, of course. Maybe half of what we tried. Enough did to keep us hoping, and when things didn't work, we learned from them anyway.We kept getting better at knowing what to try next. Bottom line, he got better. At 19, he's very high functioning. He lives in his own apartment an hour away from us, with support from the College Living Experience program in Monterey. He passed a college math class last semester. He takes the bus around town by himself. Buys his own food. Pays his own bills. He looks for his own solutions when he struggles with his autism. What we did for him absolutely helped. Relationships and work are still in the future, but he has much better prospects already than most guys with his diagnosis.
Nutrition Education
As part of my autism experience, I studied with Master Nutritionist Michael Lang, who had made remarkable vitamin formulas for his own children. I met Michael for the first time at an autism conference in New Jersey, and we realized that we lived two miles away from each other, all the way across the country, in California! Michael's vitamins helped my son a lot - as a matter of fact, he has taken them for over ten years. In 2003, I went to work for Michael. I was his business manager and his #1 student.
Michael taught me a thousand lessons about nutrition... the difference between pyridoxine and P5P, why sometimes B Vitamins make you jumpy before they make you calm, why glutathione is important, what magnesium's good for (everything!) and how to fight candida. Michael, gentle soul, died of pancreatic cancer in 2007, and I ran his company for over four years as CEO. I'm still in charge of product development there. And that's how I became an expert in dietary supplements.
Fatigue
Ok, let's rewind back to 2000. I had a third child, a girl this time, 10 lbs 10oz! She was fine - no autism, whew! About a year later,
I was stunned to find that suddenly, I didn't feel like myself anymore. I had no energy, no stamina.
I'd been fighting the autism battle on all cylinders for so long, and all of a sudden, I felt like I had no gas in my tank. This was devastating. My kids needed me! I found myself not wanting to go anywhere with the family, not having the energy to do Christmas shopping or make Halloween costumes.
I started looking for answers. I went to one doctor who said Hashimotos and gave me vitamin C drips and a little bit of thyroid. Didn't feel much better. I went to another who said liver fatigue and suggested coffee enemas and adaptogens. Not much better. Along the way, I encountered active Epstein Barr, Shingles, high CRP, low vitamin D, serious insomnia, chronic fatigue... viruses... thyroid... adrenals... sleep apnea Wow, didn't expect that one! The whole time, I kept reading, studying the medical literature, trying different approaches, asking my practitioners questions, on every topic that seemed relevant to repairing my health.
As Suzanne Somers (one of my health heroes) would say, I got "crazy smart" and kept fighting for my health.
Finally, I found a Thyroid Specialist naturopath in the Bay Area, who put it all together. She put me on a hefty dose of T3 thyroid (even though I didn't really look hypothyroid, on paper), AND lots of adrenal support, AND balanced my hormones, and tested for a bunch of other things, and FINALLY I started feeling better. About that time, I started going to school for my own certification, and learned much more about how to do it myself. To put all the pieces together, to heal an exhausted body, like mine.
I'm still working on healing my adrenals - Rome wasn't built in a day! - but I feel like myself again, and now I'm doing much of my own treatment. What I learned is that it takes a really broad-based holistic support approach, patience, persistance, and seeking and following all the clues, when adrenals are as tired as mine were. There are lots of pieces to the puzzle... immune, digestive, toxins. Lots of places to search for clues.
Weight
While I was fighting autism and getting tired out, did I mention I gained weight? Is this starting to sound familiar to some of you? I ended my last pregnancy around 200 lbs. By 2007, I was at 245. I had no energy to exercise, but I did start working very hard on my eating, and learning about the science of food, fat and weight loss. Eventually I found HCG (human chorionic gonadatropin), and together with huge lifestyle changes, this allowed me, over the course of about two years, to get my weight back to a low of 145 lbs! I now use HCG twice a year to easily maintain between 155 and 170.
I can't tell you how life-changing it is not to be a victim of my weight anymore! I am so much more optimistic about my health for the rest of my life! This is why I offer support for HCG weight loss as part of my practice. Fine tuning the optimal diet continues to be a big part of my life (and my practice!). My own current eating choice could be called "Veggie-centric Paleo with selected dairy".
Finally, as of March, 2013, I'm now feeling energetic enough to exercise again, and that's the next part of my personal journey.
So that's the long story of my passion and my calling for helping people get healthy, and how I got crazy-smart about health. I am a lifelong believer in the power of every person to take simple, everyday actions to optimize and maintain our amazing bodies.
I am thrilled to offer my support to anyone who is struggling like I was for so long and hasn't yet found their health solution. This wakes me up early every day, with so much excitement for what's possible. Give me a call today and let's talk about what's possible for your health!
